


Blackthorne House

by scribespirare



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ex-Marine Dean, Graphic Description of Corpses, Graphic Violence, M/M, Monsters, Mystery, No Hunting, PTSD, Regular Humans Sam and Dean, Sabriel is the main ship and Destiel is secondary, Slow Burn, Southern Gothic AU, Strained Relationships, Strangers to Lovers, Witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:47:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29847966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribespirare/pseuds/scribespirare
Summary: Are the neighbors of the weird, totally-not-haunted house you just inherited supposed to flirt with you?
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Gabriel/Sam Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MiaSif](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiaSif/gifts).



> another fic here for the amazing miasif! this bad boy is capped out at 25k words and will be updated weekly. probably won't be a specific day tho cause i'm awful with schedules lmao. 
> 
> if you feel there are any tags missing please lmk!

“She’s driving like shit, Sammy.”

For the umpteenth time Sam considers smashing his face against the passenger window and ending it all. Anything to get away from his brother’s incessant nagging.

“So you’ve told me, Dean,” he says instead with a sigh. “At least thirty times in the past nine hours.”

“And I’ll tell you again!” Dean snaps back, his fingers so tight on the Impala’s steering wheel that the knuckles are white. Something twists in Sam’s stomach and he tries to focus on the pine trees flying by instead of Dean’s scowl or the tic in his jaw. This argument isn’t going away any time soon unfortunately, both of them too stubborn to really let it go.

Well, Sam apologized already. It’s Dean who won’t let go.

Sam checks the GPS on his phone and sighs when it shows that they’re only five minutes out. “We should be passing through the town soon,” he says to change the subject.

It works, if only marginally. “Out here? I know you said it was in the middle of nowhere but Jesus…”

A yellow sign warns them of a lowering speed limit, followed by an old wooden thing with a single word printed on it. _Blackthorne._ No population marker, no southern welcome. Just the town name in hand carved letters, slightly jagged.

Dean slows the Impala to a tame forty just as the trees open up on several buildings. A bar, a mechanic, a tiny grocer, a gas station with a convenience store, and an unmarked building that looks like it might have been used for official business back when Blackthorne was an actual township and not on the verge of being considered a ghost town.

“Huh,” Sam says, eyeing the buildings with curiosity and no small amount of trepidation. The Impala comes to a standstill at a three way intersection, no stop sign in sight. There are no other cars on the road though, and only a few in the parking lots, so they sit a moment and just take it in. Not that there’s much to process. 

“Straight ahead?” Dean finally asks.

“To the left,” Sam corrects, and the Impala eases back into motion.

The buildings fade back into sparse pines that quickly become denser and denser the farther they go. Ever since they hit this part of Texas the pines have been interrupted frequently by sprawling, rolling farmland, sometimes with crops up to the road, other times with huge herds of cows grazing on the hilltops. But that farmland seems long gone as the pines, mostly ponderosa he thinks, stretch tall over them, and the road narrows. He can barely see anything past the trunks and undergrowth, and the sun is hidden behind looming branches.

Dean grumbles something about the quality of the road and how the springs in the Impala can’t take too many more potholes. The last is said with a pointed look in Sam’s direction, and Sam turns to stare out the window.

So maybe he fell behind on the Impala’s maintenance while Dean was away. Maybe Dean shouldn’t have run off to join the marines and instead stayed home like Sam asked him to. But that’s straying too close to the heart of the real argument taking place.

Sam’s GPS gives out a few miles from their destination. He holds his phone up to the roof like that might help him get a better signal, then towards the window, but no luck. “Well. We’re looking for something on the right in a mile or two,” he sighs, turning it off and tossing it into a cup holder. “I’m sure we can’t miss it.”

“Unless the driveway is overgrown,” Dean says.

“She only died a few weeks ago, Dean, and presumably she had to leave the house every once in a while.”

“And? These woods have bad mojo. They probably want the house back. When did you say it was built again?”

“Late 1800s I think. Slow down.” Sam leans forward in his seat, squinting at the treeline on his side of the car. Just like they’d feared the driveway is nothing more than a well worn track in the grass and underbrush. At least they think it’s the driveway. There’s no marker or physical indicator that the track leads anywhere at all, much less to someone’s home.

“I hate this,” Dean declares, even as he guides the Impala into the dense trees. “Can’t we just park here and walk the rest of the way, Sammy? These trees are so close they’re going to scratch my baby.”

The vegetation bears down on them from all sides, sunlight nearly completely blocked out now. Nothing is quite close enough to touch the car, despite Dean’s whining, but there’s definitely no way to open any of the doors without risking some chipped paint.

There’s a gentle bend in the path, and then the forest opens up suddenly and dramatically into a clearing. Somehow, despite blue sky being perfectly visible over them, the sunlight still doesn’t pierce into the clearing, leaving it shadowed and foreboding. Worse yet is the house sat in the middle of it.

At one point in time it was probably a handsome thing with its huge front porch and plantation-style architecture. But it fell into disrepair maybe fifty years ago and has been left to rot ever since. The windows are scratched and dirty, the front porch visibly sagging, and even from the ground Sam can tell that there have to be holes in the roof.

Much like they had with the town, Sam and Dean sit quietly and take the sight in, processing. Dean is the one to break the silence by shaking his head almost violently and turning to his brother.

“Sam. Remind me what the fuck we’re doing here.”

Sam sighs, finally tearing his gaze away from the house. _Their_ house now, apparently.

“Some great-aunt of ours died and since we’re the only surviving Winchesters, the house was passed down to us,” he says, then continues before Dean can press again, “And we’re _here_ because we want to sell it to the city or the state or whoever, but we have to sign the will first and…quote unquote, untangle a few decades worth of potential property tax fraud.” The executor who’d gone through their relative’s will had sounded deeply amused over the phone over that little fact, but Sam can’t say he sees the humor. Especially when he’d then insisted Sam and Dean had to come down and handle everything in person. Kansas down to Texas had been over nine hours in the car together and Sam isn’t sure he’s going to survive the trip back up.

Dean heaves an overly dramatic sigh before throwing the driver’s side door open.

Autumn in Texas is considerably warmer than autumn in Kansas apparently. The air feels hot and tight around him as Sam gets out of the car as well, at odds with the stretching shadows of the trees and the cold, lonely feeling of the house.

“Think there’s anything out back?” Dean calls, already starting for the side of the house. “Maybe a weird murder shed?” Sam rolls his eyes but follows, stepping carefully over surprisingly soft, uneven ground. The dirt looks black and like it’ll quickly turn to sucking mud at the slightest hint of rain. Fun. He’s willing to bet they’ll get the Impala stuck out here if they’re not careful. Dean might actually go to blows over that, the asshole.

There’s nothing in the backyard except more weeds and the tree line, creeping up too close for comfort to another sagging porch.

“Huh.” Dean squints at the trees, then up at the looming house and back again. “Guess not.”

“Are you really expecting to find dead bodies out here?” Sam asks, looking up at the house himself. There’s a twitch of movement in one of the first floor windows and he double takes, trying to pinpoint it. He swears he saw the outline of someone…

“In the middle of bumfuck nowhere, Texas? Of course I’m expecting to find a few bodies, Sammy.” A pause, then, “Sammy?”

Sam startles and tears his gaze away from the house. Just his imagination. “Dean, our aunt was _ninety-eight,”_ he deadpans, catching back up to the conversation.

That just earns him a lazy shrug, Dean’s hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his jacket. “And? Grandmas can be dangerous.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Sam tells him seriously, and goes back around to the front of the house. The porch squeals terrifyingly under his step but the old, dark wood holds his weight. What a surprise.

“You got a key?” Dean asks, very carefully placing one foot on the bottom step and testing it with his weight. Like Sam isn’t standing on the porch just fine.

“No need,” he replies, the front door opening with an ominous crok and revealing a dark hallway beyond. “Nobody’s been here since she died, apparently, and I doubt the guy who found her locked up after he left.”

“And who found her, exactly?” Neither of them is moving towards the open door. The hallway is narrow and though there’s the glow of light spilling through windows coming from somewhere within, said windows are not visible.

“Some neighbor, I think,” Sam says, and before he can muster up his courage, Dean pushes past him and inside.

They discover quickly that there’s no electricity and Dean has to run back to the car to grab flashlights for the both of them. A quick look around proves the house to be in better condition than they’d previously thought; it’s filled with old, sturdy furniture of aged wood, and the exact amount of framed photos nailed to the walls as you’d expect an old woman to have. Which is, in scientific terms, a metric fuckton.

Dean shines his light at one in the living area, a huge room with two couches, bookshelves, a vinyl player, a radio, and no sign of a tv. “What did she look like?”

“Dunno,” Sam replies, flicking his light over the shelves. Half of them are filled with actual books, the other half with various knickknacks and more framed photos. Most of the books look older, and even in the beam of his flashlight he can’t pick up titles off of their spines.

“Do you know anything about her except that she died?”

“Alice Winchester. She used to be a seamstress but stopped working after her husband died back in the sixties,” Sam recites, pausing on what appears to be a wedding photo. The woman in it is handsome but not beautiful, with a strong jaw and soft, caring eyes. Like everything else in the house the colors are faded, but he thinks her hair might have been a bright, fiery red, and freckles stand out against the pale skin of her face. The man beside her is tall and willowy, but strangely his face has been scratched out. Sam carefully rubs a finger against the glass of the frame, thinking at first that the dull spot is just dust. But it doesn’t clear up and his finger comes away clean.

“And?” Dean presses, reminding Sam that he’d been speaking.

“Not much else,” he says, moving on from the photo. “She lived here alone until she died. Bit of a recluse. Hey, don’t you think this place is a little too clean to have been empty for weeks?”

The squeaking of a floorboard directly over their heads cuts off Dean’s reply. They both crane their necks back, flashlight beams cutting across the ceiling as they try to pinpoint the sound. It doesn’t come again.

“Weird old house noise?” Dean asks.

“Let’s hope so. I’ll go check it out, I guess.”

Dean grunts in reply. “And _I’m_ gonna check out the kitchen. Twenty bucks says she didn’t have a fridge.”

“She wasn’t _that_ old, Dean.”

“Twenty bucks.”

They split up, Dean across the hall, his flashlight briefly picking up dark red countertops, and Sam continuing on towards the stairs. They’re as narrow as the hallway and creak loudly with every step.

Like downstairs, the upstairs is a lot less dusty than Sam really feels it should be. In fact, everything is completely tidy and in place, no dirty clothes lying around, the bed in the master room perfectly made. Like nobody ever lived here at all, photographs or not.

Sam is looking for some sign of life, of habitation -why is the dresser empty? Has someone been here after all?- when he hears faint rustling and the creak of another floorboard. He pauses, head swiveling towards the sound as he tries to pinpoint it.

There’s a door on the other side of the bed, closed, clearly not a closet because of the faint light around its edges. Like there’s a window on the other side. The rustling comes again and Sam feels his lungs squeeze a little.

Weird, creepy old house? Check. Lights not working? Check. Faint noise behind a door he probably shouldn’t be opening? Double check. All that’s left to make this a horror movie is for his flashlight to go out. The beam holds steady though as Sam rounds the bed. At the last second he pauses to grab a heavy looking lamp off the bedside table, holding it out threateningly. He’s not sure what’s behind the door, nothing probably, just the house being its weird old self, but he feels better for having a weapon.

Taking a deep breath, Sam throws the door open all at once, hard enough to swing wide, but not so hard that it’ll ricochet off the opposite wall. Nothing comes running out at him and he breathes out slowly through his nose. His light picks up floral shower curtains, a window, the edge of a yellowed ceramic sink. He sweeps the beam downwards and startles when it catches on something that reflects light back at him.

There’s a cat sitting on a soft looking bath rug. Its eyes glow an ominous green in the dark, unmoving, fur a shiny, deep black except for an almost star-like white spot on its forehead. Somehow it looks very…uncat like.

Sam stares at it and the thing stares back for a long, drawn-out moment. Then it blinks and stands, tail waving lazily, and suddenly it seems like a perfectly normal cat. Sam huffs a breath in amusement, mostly at himself.

“Hey, kitty,” he murmurs, watching how the cat’s ears flick towards him. “What’re you doing in here?”

Something weird is going on with this house, and the cat only further proves it. How did it get in? How is it still alive after supposed weeks of being alone? If someone is stopping by regularly to clean and take care of it, then why doesn’t the house have any working electricity?

The cat darts, suddenly, past Sam’s legs, making him jerk and curse softly. It disappears out of the room and down the hall, its little feet silent on the wooden floors. Sam watches it go and then shakes his head. He spends a moment glancing over the bathroom but there’s no food or water bowls set out, no litter box, and the window is shut tight.

It’s when he’s glancing through the window that he sees it. Movement. The window looks down into the small backyard and is level with some of the lower branches on the trees. The glass is dark and dirty, but Sam is still able to pick out a separate shape from the trees, humanoid and moving. He can’t tell what it’s doing, even when he rubs at the window to try and clean it. His hand comes away clean, strangely, so whoever has been cleaning hasn’t bothered with the outside of the house.

Sam heads back downstairs at a light jog, intending to confront whomever is lurking around the house. Anywhere else a visitor wouldn’t be that unusual, but this place is in the middle of nowhere. Who would be out here, and why?

He makes a racket going down the stairs of course, and Dean sticks his head out from the kitchen. “Shouldn’t have made that bet!” he calls. “It’s old but it’s a fridge. Weird thing is there’s nothing in it.”

That makes Sam pause in his hunt for the back door. “What?”

“It’s empty. Pantry and cabinets too. There are some dishes and shit, but no food. Anything upstairs?”

“A cat,” Sam replies, then glances up and down the hallway like the animal will materialize. “Did you see it run through here?”

“No. Why is there a cat in here? Did the will guy mention one?”

Sam shakes his head and then remembers the reason he came down here in the first place. He finds the back door through the kitchen, and steps out onto a wide porch with a table and a rocking chair off to the side. They’re not what he’s looking for though and he paces to the edge of the porch, scanning the treeline through squinted eyes.

It takes him a moment to find the human figure in all the shadows and the weak, gray light that’s managed to filter through the trees. But it shifts and that’s all Sam needs.

“Hey!” he calls out, already starting down the steps and towards the treeline. “Hey, what the hell are you doing out here?” A touch aggressive perhaps, but he’s on edge; it’s something about this house, the forest, how dark the day is despite the fact that he knows the sky is perfectly clear and the sun beautifully bright.

The figure pauses and Sam is half expecting it to turn and take off deeper into the trees. Instead it waits patiently, calmly lifting an arm in a half-hearted wave. Once Sam is beneath the trees his eyes begin to adjust to the shadows there. It’s like stepping into another world, all his senses clicking together at once, picking up insect noise, visual details, and a faint breeze he hadn’t noticed up near the house.

A man is standing a few feet within the treeline. His expression is vaguely amused and immediately pisses Sam off a little, somehow. Even from a distance Sam can tell the man is shorter than himself, not uncommon considering Sam’s height, with narrow, relaxed shoulders, a strong nose, and dark hair that’s just a touch overlong.

“Howdy!” he calls once Sam is close enough, completely casual in his faded blue jeans and leather jacket. “You must be Alice’s…great-grand cousin, twice removed, I think?”

“Great-grandnephews, presumably,” Sam corrects, then repeats, “What the hell are you doing out here?”

“Oh, just checking out the place,” the man replies. His mouth is curled up one side as he slowly looks Sam up and down. “Not bad.”

Sam feels his face flush a little despite himself. Before he can muster up a response, knocked completely off guard, the man continues. “My name’s Gabriel. I live a hop and a skip up the road that way,” he points off to the west, in the opposite direction of Blackthorne. “Alice was our only neighbor for miles n’miles. Used to come check up on her and do repairs around the house.”

He must have been the one to find Alice after she’d passed then, if there are no other neighbors. But that still doesn’t explain why he’s lurking in the woods around the house _now._ Also if he was doing repairs on the house then his handyman skills are severely lacking.

“Any particular reason you’re out here today?”

“Saw you guys turn down the driveway on my way home earlier and got curious,” Gabriel says, giving a rolling shrug of his shoulders. He stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets, one hip cocked ever so slightly. He’s an attractive man, Sam can admit. If only he didn’t do weird stuff like stand outside people’s houses. “I didn’t think anyone would come to claim the house so imagine my surprise.”

“So you’re watching us,” Sam concludes, voice deadpan.

Another shrug and again Gabriel’s mouth twitches up like he finds the whole situation funny. “If you want to call it that. By the way, the electricity’s shut off but I can show you how to turn it on again.”

Sam pauses, putting a few things together rapid-fire. “Have you been cleaning the place? After she died, I mean.”

That makes Gabriel start in surprise, though it’s fairly subtle. “Huh, you’re smarter than you look there, moose. Yeah, I cleaned it up a few days ago.”

“And you’ve been feeding the cat?”

Gabriel’s eyes narrow. “Cat? There’s no cat.”

“Yes there is. In the upstairs bathroom.”

For a moment the other man is silent, face closed off in a way that makes Sam even more uneasy. Then he seems to shrug it off all at once. “Must have wandered in when I wasn’t looking. Here, let me show you the generator.” Gabriel doesn’t wait for a response, just moves back towards the house. He heads around to the side Sam hasn’t seen yet and pauses beside a huge, ancient-looking metal contraption, the grass underneath it long dead and decomposed.

“She’s old but she gets the job done,” Gabriel is saying, running one hand along the side of it until he finds what he’s looking for. “Flip the switch on this side and then pull the cord. Might take a few tries.” He demonstrates how to pull the cord, much like a lawn mower, and after a few splutters the thing roars to life with an unexpected ferocity.

“There!” Gabriel yells over the noise, and Sam can see several lights inside the house come on all at once. The other man paces away and points out a very faint opening in the treeline, the packed dirt suggesting a trail through the undergrowth. “There’s a shed through there where you can find some old gas cans. You’ll probably need to refill the generator a few times a week. Less if you turn it off at night. It’s cool enough now that you might not need to run the A/C after dark.”

Sam disagrees vehemently that the area is in way shape or form ‘cool’. The air still feels thick and hot and seems to stick to his skin. Still, “Thanks,” he says.

Gabriel smiles at him, bright and equally charming and off-putting. “No problem! I gotta get back, make sure baby brother didn’t fall into the combine while I was gone. Nice meeting you…?”

“Sammy!” Dean’s voice comes from the porch behind then, and both Sam and Gabriel turn to see Dean emerging from the house. He zeroes in on them quickly, pausing for a moment when he sees Gabriel, then trots down the porch stairs to meet them.

“Who’s this?”

“The neighbor,” Sam replies before Gabriel can. “He was just leaving. Gabriel, this is my brother, Dean.”

Gabriel raises an eyebrow at him but stuffs his hands in his pockets again. “Sure was. Pleasure to meet you Dean, Sammy.”

Sam narrows his eyes at the nickname, but Gabriel is walking back into the woods and it’s more effort than it’s worth to call him back and correct him. The brothers stand there in the yard, the droning of the generator a constant noise in the background as they watch Gabriel’s form quickly get swallowed up by the trees.

“Where the hell he’d come from?” Dean finally asks.

Sam gestures helplessly at the trees. “Walked through the woods, apparently. I saw him from the second story window. He said he saw us pull into the drive and got curious so he came to investigate.” 

“And he didn’t think to come knock on the front door like a normal person? What a creep.”

Sam couldn’t agree more.

oOo

Neither of them wants to sleep in the master bedroom.

The house is considerably less creepy with all the lights on and the A/C blowing, but that still doesn’t mean either of them wants to spend the night in a dead woman’s bed. After some brief arguing Sam wins the upstairs guest bedroom, and Dean the couches in the living room. They discover one of them is a pullout, which reduces Dean’s bitching considerably.

They bed down for the night after dinner at the one restaurant in Blackthorne.

Sam tosses and turns for hours, unable to settle. The noise of the generator is surprisingly quiet from within the house, but the old wood creaks and moans all night and the air in the guest bedroom seems unnaturally still. Like something is holding its breath, waiting for an unnamed event.

The screaming starts just before dawn. Sam had been drifting in and out of a restless sleep when it wakes him, startling his hazy mind into sharp, panicked awareness. He’d recognize Dean’s voice anywhere and he’s vaulted himself out of bed and down the hall before he makes a conscious decision to. He skips steps on his way down the stairs and his bare feet slide against the wooden hallway floor as he comes skidding into the living room.

Despite his panic, he already knows what he’s going to find. Dean tangled in his sheets, thrashing violently, sweaty, lost in a nightmare. No matter how many times it’s happened in the past two months since Dean’s return, Sam still comes running.

He has learned from the first few times though, and avoids grabbing Dean by the arm or shoulder. Instead he stands at the bottom of the bed and gently grabs his brother’s foot, shaking it lightly and calling his name. Like usual Dean comes up swinging. He’d nearly gotten Sam that first time, then actually landed a punch the second, resulting in a nasty black eye and a sullen, guilty Dean.

“Dean!” Sam calls again and his brother’s eyes snap open, movements stilling. His chest is rising and falling rapidly but his gaze is clear and aware, taking in Sam and the living room quickly. His arms lower and a fine tremor runs through his body, all at once. But all he says, his voice rough like it’s being dragged over gravel, is, “Mornin’, Sammy.”

Sam huffs a breath, his own heartbeat and breathing slowing as he comes down from the adrenaline rush. “Don’t you _Mornin’ Sammy_ me, Dean. You said this wasn’t going to keep happening.”

Swinging his legs over the side of the pullout bed, Dean pulls at the sheets tangled around himself and grunts. “Can’t exactly control my nightmares.”

“You can if you get therapy.”

Dean grunts again and pushes away from the bed, stalking past Sam and into the hall with the coordination of someone freshly awake. “I’m not going to some shrink, Sam, I already told you.”

Sam follows him into the kitchen doggedly, his ire quickly building. “You need help, Dean.”

“I’m fine,” Dean snaps, tone indicating his own rising anger. He turns the kitchen sink on with more force than necessary and shoves a cup underneath it.

“You’re not, though,” Sam says, hovering in the kitchen doorway. “You have nightmares more nights of the week than not, and half the time you scream loud enough to wake me. That’s not okay.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Dean insists again. “I don’t want some stranger digging around in my head and pretending to care about all my stupid problems!”

“Well you need to do _something._ Shoving everything under the rug and pretending there’s no problem is only going to make it worse.” For a moment there’s silence, Dean with his back turned, now-empty water glass in hand, and Sam staring pleadingly, angrily at his rigid shoulders. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be a therapist,” Sam tries, searching for some kind of compromise his brother will accept. “You can talk to someone else. There are phone lines, or online services. Hell, you can even talk to me or, or a priest for all I care. Just talk to _someone_.”

The glass slams down on the counter hard enough to crack. “Drop it, Sammy,” Dean says, his voice low in warning and a heavy glare tossed over his shoulder.

“No,” Sam replies, jutting his chin out. They’re both too stubborn to move on this, and they both know it as well, tension high and tight between them in the air.

Eventually Dean shoves away from the counter with an audible growl. Sam is taking up most of the kitchen doorway but that doesn’t stop his brother from shouldering past him, nearly violent in the way he pushes past. Back in the living room he dresses with sharp, angry movements, pointedly ignoring when Sam says his name.

Angry and hurt and frustrated, Sam watches as his brother grabs the keys for the Impala and stalks out of the house. He follows Dean and stands on the porch, not sure what to say to try and bridge this gap between them. It’s so obvious to him that Dean needs help. Why can’t his brother just suck it up and ask for some? Why can’t he just _trust_ Sam?

The Impala doesn’t start. Sam can see the way Dean is trying to crank it, the angry expression on his face, the curses falling from his mouth as the engine sputters but doesn’t turn over. Sees the way he throws his head back against the headrest and seems to gather himself before throwing open the driver’s side door.

_Oh no,_ thinks Sam.

“She’s dead, Sam!” Dean calls across the yard. His voice is full of accusation and anger, but he still opens the hood with the utmost of care. “Why didn’t you take care of her like I asked?”

“I already apologized,” Sam calls back, because he has. Multiple times now.

“Sorry doesn’t fix my baby!” His brother leans over the engine, running a practiced eye over it but even Sam can see from a distance that there’s nothing obvious out of place. “I asked you to do _one_ thing for me while I was overseas. Just one! But you couldn’t be bothered to do even that because you’re a petty bitch.”

“Excuse me for not wanting my brother to run off and be canon fodder for the marines!” Sam snaps, stepping down off the porch.

“So you took it out on my car!?” Dean is going through the steps of checking his oil and fluids, using the hem of his shirt to wipe his hands and the dipstick in lieu of a rag.

“Dean.” Sam says his name with as much force as he can muster. It gets the reaction he wants, his brother turning to look him in the eye. “Listen to me. I didn’t think you were going to come back. Dad didn’t, why the hell should I have held out hope for you? I was going to take the biggest mallet I could find to that stupid car the moment someone in uniform showed up on my doorstep.”

From so far away Sam can’t see into Dean’s eyes, but he can see the way his brother’s face shuts off completely. Very carefully Dean closes the hood and then begins walking away from the house with purpose.

“Where are you going?”

“Out!” Dean calls without turning back. “I can’t be around you right now, and I need some tools to get into the engine.”

Within a minute he’s hit the treeline and disappears around the bend in the driveway. Sam watches him go, unable to stop him.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s a good half-dozen miles back into town, but Dean can’t bring himself to care. He’s been on worse marches, and with a full pack to boot. It’ll take him a few hours which is the perfect amount of time he needs to cool down and get his head right.

The details of his nightmare are fuzzy and distant but he knows what it was about nonetheless. It’s always the same thing. You’d think it’s the combat that’s the worst, the most traumatizing part of being deployed. But it’s not. It’s the waiting. It’s the breathless moments after combat where the dust settles and the carnage is revealed. It’s the civilians, caught in the middle of something they don’t understand, rightfully untrusting, angry, resigned to the way of life in a war zone.

No, combat is easy. It’s instinct and training and getting the job done. It’s when the real world and morals come back into play that things become difficult.

Once, Dean had been walking along a dry river bed when he’d heard a distinctive _click_ from underneath his boot. A land mine. There are two kinds: ones that ignite when pressure is removed, and ones that ignite when enough pressure is placed on them. He’d heard the click before his foot was fully down, which meant it could be either or. But the wrong choice could kill him.

He’d stood there for hours, unable to decide what choice to make. If he pressed down hard enough he might be able to break the mechanism if it was the type to ignite when pressure was removed. But what if it was the other kind? If he merely pulled his foot off it wouldn’t ignite at all.

The leg with most of his weight on it nearly seized up on him, his knee aching from strain, before he finally bit the bullet. He took a deep breath and yanked his foot up, expecting the worse. Thinking of his father who had died in the marines before him, how Sammy told him he was going off to be killed just like dear old dad. How he was going to wind up being right.

But nothing happened. There was no explosion. Dean carefully retraced his steps back to camp in case there were any other mines around. When he got back he reported the incident. It wasn’t until he was undressing for the night and pulling his boots off that he found the bottle cap stuck in the grooves of his sole.

The moment is still vivid in his mind and features regularly in his nightmares. Mostly he hears the click when he’s in the middle of one of the towns they’d occupied and suddenly there are more lives on the line than just his own. He watches as children run by, as adults go about their days, as his unit laughs and talks, all unaware of the tiny, innocuous noise he just heard. His leg seizes and aches and screams at him and still he doesn’t move. If he speaks he thinks his weight might shift. If he gestures he’ll over balance himself.

Sometimes he thinks he hears that click even when he’s awake.

There’s a lesson from the universe to be learned here, he’s sure. But he doesn’t know what the hell it is and the universe can go fuck itself anyways. Especially considering the dream had morphed again last night.

He’d been in the city, had heard the click, had felt his leg seize, but then it all faded. Snatched away by a brisk breeze he hadn’t been able to feel as anything except heat. Then he’d been standing in the living room of that old, rundown house in Texas, furniture materializing slowly around him, and still he didn’t move, felt like he couldn’t or that bomb would surely go off.

Once the furniture and walls were visible and solid, then had come the bodies. One by one at first, then all at once; six of them, strewn across the living room in various awkward poses of death. Their forms were wispy and vague but he could see them clearly anyways, torn open and bloody, empty chest cavities, missing eyes. And they were all turned to face him, necks bent horribly, mouths gaping wide.

The one closest was a man who might have been called handsome in life but was nearly unrecognizable under the blood and viscera of his death. He was the most damaged of the group, the most savagely ripped apart. But it was his lips that moved, that formed a single sound. “Lea- Lea-” Blood rushed forth and bubbled from the open mouth, choking the man. He made an awful gagging sound, limbs twitching feebly.

That’s when Dean had awoken screaming.

He walks for maybe a half mile before a truck comes up behind him. It’s an old 90s model Ford with peeling white paint stained dirty yellow and a single cab. The man who rolls down the window looks incongruous against streaked glass windows and cracked leather seats.

“You need a lift to town?”

Dean considers his options. He can man it out and walk the rest of the five and a half miles and get to the auto store after midday, or he can suck it up and accept a little help.

“Sure,” he says, not wanting to say it at all. He’s not stupid, but pride is a hard thing to beat down.

The man is scruffy with dark hair and blue eyes, a fawn-colored trench coat over wrinkled slacks and an off-white button down. His tie is blue and his dark eyes seem to reflect the color somehow.

“Castiel,” he says, holding out a hand to shake once Dean is seated in the cab. Dean doesn’t remark on the strange name, shakes his hand and gives his own name, and then they’re headed off towards town again.

“I’ve never seen you around here before,” Castiel remarks. His eyes are fixed on the road, but Dean can tell his attention is all on him. Despite his apparent interest, he speaks in a gruff not-quite-monotone, like he’s only used to saying things that are gravely serious. That combined with the outfit makes Dean think he might be some kind of backwaters preacher.

“Some old family member died and my brother and I were listed in the will. Had to come down and sort out the house in person, apparently.”

“Oh, you’re Alice’s relatives,” Castiel says. “She was our neighbor. I’m sorry for your loss.”

Dean doesn’t mention that they never knew her, instead focusing on the neighbor bit. “You know a guy named Gabriel? He showed up at the house last night claiming to be our neighbor too.”

That earns him a quick glance from Cas before he focuses on the road again. “Yes. He’s my brother.”

The words, “I’m sorry,” slip out before Dean can stop them. Luckily it startles a brief, husky laugh out of Castiel instead of any kind of offense.

“Gabriel can take some getting used to,” Cas admits, one part of his mouth tilting up in a way that’s similar to the way Gabriel had smiled, but also completely different. On Cas it looks soft and unsure, like he doesn’t smile or laugh often. On Gabriel it had just looked smug and like he needed a good punch to the face.

“Tell him not to come creeping around the house like he did. We got a perfectly good front door he can knock on,” Dean says, earning himself another of those huffed laughs. He thinks he might like those.

“I’ll be sure to pass along the message.”

They fall into a strangely comfortable silence as the truck rumbles its way into Blackthorne. It looks even more deserted than it had yesterday, probably because it’s still so early.

“I’m assuming you were headed to the auto store?” Cas guesses. “Nobody walks to town if they can help it.”

“Yeah, my baby broke down,” Dean says, feeling a brief flare of anger all over again before he tamps it down.

“Unfortunately for you, Benny doesn’t tend to open until 10 or so.” Cas hesitates a moment, fingers curling and uncurling around the steering wheel, which he’s holding in a perfect 10 and 2. “Do you…want to grab breakfast? To pass the time, I mean. That’s where I was headed.”

Dean’s tempted to make a comment about the preacher garb and church but decides against it. “Sure, I could go for some grub.”

Cas eases the truck into the diner’s parking lot. The building looks like it’s seen better days and the big red letters that say _Ruth’s_ seem to teeter in a nonexistent breeze. The inside isn’t much better. It’s an old diner with faded red booths and seats along the bar that don’t inspire confidence in their ability to hold a full grown man’s weight. Still, there are two people sitting at opposite ends, each nursing their own mug of coffee. The woman behind the counter, not the same one who had waited on him and Sam the night before, doesn’t greet them, and Cas picks a booth for them along the front windows.

“This place is kind of a dive, huh?” Dean comments as he slides into the seat, voice low so as not to be heard over the unfamiliar yet completely predictable music playing.

Cas blinks at him like he’s not sure what the word dive means. “I suppose.”

“I just mean it’s kinda…grungy,” Dean explains. “Could use some new paint and a few good hours with a power washer.”

“Ah,” Cas says in a way that means he still doesn’t quite get it. Whatever he was going to continue with is cut off by the waitress coming up to their table. She flips open an old fashioned order book and raises an eyebrow at them both, not saying a word.

“Coffee for me,” Cas says, “and the Denver scramble.”

There are no menus on the table and the waitress doesn’t look like she’s planning on offering him one any time soon. “Uh, same as him?” Dean tries.

The waitress walks away without having written anything down or saying a word. Dean watches her go, feeling unsettled and confused. Fucking small towns man. They’re so strange.

Cas doesn’t appear to think anything about the situation is strange, but then he’s also just as weird as this town. Probably lived here his entire life. He’s watching Dean steadily, his gaze unwavering. “You seem nervous.”

Dean rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck to prove exactly how untrue that statement is. “Nah. This place is just weird, kind of gives me the heebie jeebies.”

“Heebie jeebies,” Cas echos, sounding the words out slowly. There’s a cute little furrow that appears between his brows and Dean can’t help the way it makes him laugh.

“Yeah, you know, the willies? The jitters. It’s just kind of creepy. Very _The Hills Have Eyes_.”

“I have no idea what any of that means,” Cas admits, and once more that small smile appears. It makes Dean perk up a little, interested in making it appear more. “But I like-”

Again he’s cut off by the arrival of the waitress. She sets down two steaming mugs and two glasses of water, then she’s gone again. Dean can’t seem to take his eyes off Cas this time around and doesn’t track her progress back to the counter. Still, he comments, “She doesn’t say much, does she?”

“Not really,” Cas agrees lightly. It takes a moment but he finally breaks their eye contact, reaching across the table for sugar and creamer. Dean watches quietly as he pours a metric fuckton of each into his mug and stirs it idly, finding that he kind of misses the eye contact.

It’s been a while since Dean’s felt this kind of draw towards someone else. Since before his deployment, that’s for sure, and only once towards another man. It’s something about Cas’s eyes, the work-worn hands that curl around his coffee mug, how he’d stopped to offer Dean a ride without making a huge deal out of it.

“I’m glad you agreed to breakfast,” Cas says suddenly, breaking Dean out of his staring and circling thoughts. “I don’t usually come here alone. But Gabriel was being…more overbearing than usual. I couldn’t take it.”

Dean barks out another laugh, surprising Cas into looking up at him again. “Brothers, huh? I love Sam but he’s such an asshole sometimes. Always thinks he knows best because he went off to a fancy college and I didn’t.” Shaking his head, Dean pulls his own coffee close and sips from the warm ceramic. It’s not good by any means, but it’s dark and strong and that’s the important part. His anger from this morning is starting to feel almost distant, unimportant in the face of greasy diner food and steady blue eyes.

“Gabriel never went to college,” Cas says, watching Dean in turn. “But he is still something of a know-it-all, as they say.”

“Does he do that thing where he looks at you like you’re sad and stupid?”

Cas’s nose wrinkles and Dean feels something lurch in his stomach at the sight. “All the time.”

That’s enough to send Dean off in a brief tirade about stupid brothers, gesturing and working himself up, though he’s not actually angry at this point. And not even that invested in what he’s saying, he just wants to make Cas laugh. Which he does, a lot more than the little huff he’d gotten in the truck, and soon Cas has joined him in his spiel.

They lament the overbearing nature of their brothers, how smart they think they are, and their general asshole-ry. Gabe is also apparently fond of pranking even though most of the time Cas finds his antics less than amusing. In turn Dean talks about how Sam refused to do the one small thing Dean asked of him when he was deployed. It’s as cathartic a conversation as it is charming.

They only stop when the food arrives and that’s so they can eat. The Denver scramble is overloaded with meat and potatoes and eggs and is so greasy it nearly falls right off the plate. It’s exactly the artery-clogging meal Dean prefers this early in the morning.

“This is damn good,” he says through a mouth full of eggs. Cas gives him a slightly scandalized look and Dean shrugs his lack of manners away. “I see why this place is still open even in the middle of nowhere.”

“Blackthorne has more residents than you’d think,” Cas replies evenly. It’s a benign enough statement, nothing sinister about it at all. But something prickles along Dean’s instincts anyways, the same sensation he’d gotten overseas when a situation was about to go FUBAR. He’s learned not to ignore his instincts, but a quick glance reveals nobody around but the two guys at the bar and the waitress, and Cas’s comment is still just a simple observation.

“Are you okay?”

Dean startles slightly, not realizing he’d gone rigid until Cas’s voice reaches him. He shakes the sensation off and digs his fork aggressively into his food. “Fine. Dunno what came over me.”

Maybe Sam might be onto something about the whole therapy bullshit.

oOo

The house is disturbingly quiet. After a night spent listening to it creak and groan, the utter silence is unnerving at best. He has to focus just to hear the generator grumbling outside. And with Dean gone Sam can’t help feeling completely alone.

It’s not an unfamiliar feeling. He’d felt pretty similarly when Dean had first enlisted. They’d spent most of their childhood waiting for their dad to come back, lying their asses off to teachers and cops and, on one memorable occasion, a CPS officer. The last one had been pretty impressive on Dean’s part, Sam can admit. Two kids taking care of themselves and trying to pretend they had an adult at home and not just letters and prepaid credit cards. It had taken a lot of smooth talking from Dean to get the officer to go away.

The point is though, that they had always been together. A team. Sam hadn’t ever wanted that to change for them.

Dean had been eighteen by the time their father had died, and Sam not far behind him. They’d stuck together for a few years, until Sam could get his scholarship into law school. And then off Dean had been like a shot. Like he’d just been waiting for someone else to come along and take Sam off his hands.

For nearly a decade he was in the marines, constantly overseas, back-to-back deployments. He’d come home for a few weeks or a few months at a time, crashing on Sam’s couch or in a Motel 6, but he was never happy to be there. Talking about the buddies in his unit, his next assignment, how weird it was to be back in the states. And as glad as Sam was to see him alive and well again, those hadn’t been happy times. He’d never felt so far away from his brother as when Dean was right in front of him, but his eyes glazed, his thoughts half a world away. His bags never unpacked, shoes never not shined to drill sergeant approved perfection.

Over time though, Dean became disillusioned with the marines. Sam isn’t sure exactly what or who sparked it. He’d been so gung-ho about the whole thing since he was a young, father-idolizing child. But he’d quit and come home at last, haunted by whatever he’d seen and done, and no longer talking about the men he’d grown close to on his unit.

It’s nice to have his brother back, but at times like these it feels like Dean never really came home at all. The house is huge and silent and foreboding, and Sam is alone standing in the hallway with the taste of bile in the back of his throat.

Sam shakes his head and pulls himself together. With the Impala broken down, that puts a bit of a wrench in Sam’s plans; namely that he can’t go to the executor’s office to meet the man in person now. Or go out for food for that matter.

Going back upstairs, Sam grabs his phone and dresses for the day before sending off a terse text to Dean asking him to pick up some food for the house. Who knows how long they’re going to be here. Then he calls the executor.

The man on the other end of the line has a thick southern accent and the dialect of someone who definitely didn’t go to law school, despite the fact that he obviously did.

“This is Bobby,” he greets, except the words are all slow and run together, like they’ve melted under the heat of a Texas sun.

“Hi Mr. Singer, it’s Sam Winchester.”

He gets a grunt in response, and he can hear the faint shuffling of paper. “I told you to call me Bobby. None of this Mr. Singer crap, makes me feel old. Now, what can I do you for, Sam?”

Sam gives him a brief rundown of the situation, which for some reason Bobby finds amusing if his laughter is anything to go by. When he’s done making fun of Sam he offers to come by on a house visit with his tow truck to boot. Why he owns a tow truck is beyond Sam, but he accepts gratefully nonetheless and Bobby tells him he’ll be by in about an hour.

No sooner has Sam hung up his cellphone than he hears a clattering noise from upstairs. It makes him jump; any sound in this house seems to travel and echo unnaturally, and the noise of whatever fell or was knocked over hangs heavy in the air long after it ends.

Sam stays where he’s standing for a long moment, listening. The hair on the back of his arms is standing on end and he’s not sure when his breathing got so heavy. He rubs at his arm, feeling a little stupid for being so startled by a mere noise, and finally pushes himself into action.

Upstairs he checks the guest room and bathroom first, but nothing is out of place in either. The master bedroom door is closed and nobody’s been in there since Gabriel showed up yesterday. Maybe the stack of books on the bedside table toppled over? Or an older piece of furniture collapsed under its own weight.

Again Sam finds himself a little short of breath as he stands in front of the bedroom door. He doesn’t feel like he’s in any danger necessarily, just…unsettled. Like something about the very air around him is wrong. With another self-admonishment he opens the door and steps into the room. It’s not hard to see where the noise came from. The drawer from the bedside table is on the floor, and out of it has spilled a bunch of stones, uniform in color and shape.

Sitting beside the mess is the cat. It stares up at Sam with keen eyes, completely still.

“How the hell did you get in here?” Sam asks it, and the thing blinks slowly at him. He’s positive he closed the door right after he left the room yesterday. _After_ the cat had already run away.

When the cat stands up, Sam instinctively takes a step back, though he’s not really sure why. He manages to keep himself still as it walks towards him, and then almost deliberately rubs against his leg. It sends a shock of cold up his body and he jerks away from it. The thing looks up and blinks at him again, then just like the first time he’d seen it, runs out of the room and disappears. 

…What the fuck just happened. Sam stares after it, gears turning in his brain as he tries to figure it out. How did it get in here? Why was it so _cold?_ He can still feel the shock of its fur, even through the denim of his jeans.

When no answers are immediately forthcoming, Sam shakes himself and goes to clean up the mess the animal left. How it was able to open the drawer is another mystery, though from what he knows of cats and their ability to get into what they shouldn’t, perhaps that answer isn’t quite so difficult.

The stones are smooth and strangely warm when he starts to gather them. Each is triangular in shape, with rounded tips, and oddly enough a perfect circle carved out of their middles. And there’s so damn many of them. Who keeps a bunch of random stones in their bedside table? He’s heard of rock collectors before, but don’t they usually try to gather different types?

Once the stones are all back in the drawer, Sam slides it into place in the table and shuts it firmly. Then he goes around the room, trying to make sure there are no open windows or hidden doors a cat could sneak through when he’s not looking. Nothing turns up of course and he leaves feeling just as unsettled as when he’d entered.

With nothing better to do after that, Sam grabs a notebook from his bag and starts the arduous process of going through the house and making notes about it. One side is for things that may need to be fixed before it can sell; the other is for things he might be able to list as features to potential buyers. The first is woefully long, the latter woefully short.

The list occupies him until Bobby arrives some time later. Sam can hear him coming from the moment he turns down the drive, tires loud against the packed dirt and gravel. He goes out onto the porch to wait for him, unsurprised by the beat-up tow truck that comes through the trees. Nor is he surprised by the man that steps out of it with his plaid shirt, trucker cap, faded jeans, and work boots. The briefcase dangling from one hand is incongruous with the rest of him.

Sam comes down off the porch to shake his hand and greet him.

“I’d offer you a drink but there’s nothing in the house.”

“No worries, boy, I came prepared,” Bobby tells him, and throws open the passenger door to pull out a cooler. “Figured with the car broke down you hadn’t had a chance to get some shoppin’ done, so I brought provisions.”

“Oh,” Sam says, caught off guard. “That’s really nice of you, thanks.”

“Think nothin’ of it. Here, you carry this in.” The cooler is passed to Sam and he takes it up to the house with Bobby on his heels. “Where’s this brother of yours?”

“Out,” is all Sam says. The house is dark and just as quiet as it had been earlier, and Bobby pauses on the threshold, making Sam turn back to him.

“How ‘bout we stay out here?” Bobby says, completely casual. But there’s something in the way his gaze flickers over the dark hallway, an attentiveness in his stance that doesn’t sit right with Sam. “Some fresh air is probably good fer both of us.”

“Uh. Sure? Let me just-” Sam takes the cooler into the kitchen and unloads its contents into the fridge. Beer, bread, hot dogs, sliced cheese and meat for sandwiches, and eggs and milk. Enough stuff to last two full grown men a day or so. He grabs two of the beers and heads back out onto the porch with them.

Bobby has taken a seat on the front steps, his briefcase resting against his leg, and a sheaf of papers in his lap. His attention is on the woods though, gaze scanning along the tree line like he’s looking for something.

“Your brother try to walk into town?” he asks when Sam joins him on the step. Sam makes a noise of assent, and Bobby huffs a laugh. “Pretty stupid.”

Nothing Sam can argue with there. “Dean’s stubborn,” he says simply, and passes Bobby a beer. The older man takes it gratefully and produces a bottle opener attached to his key chain. He cracks open both of their drinks with a practiced flick of his wrist.

It’s getting on into the afternoon and the day is starting to really heat up, a bright sun beating down on the trees and grass. And if the clearing around the house seems more shadowed than it should be, well, it must be a trick of the forest Sam figures. The sound of cicadas drone through the air, and the house’s generator provides a steady beat for them to sing to.

Sam takes a long drag of his beer and even the taste of it, familiar and sharp, seems dulled. Like the sun he logically knows it should be brighter, stronger, but it’s just…not.

He and Bobby spend a few hours together, going through the paperwork, signing and discussing and going over all the fine details. Will executing isn’t exactly Sam’s field of study, but he still went to law school. While you’d think that fact would make the process go quicker since he knows what he’s about, it seems to slow them down instead somehow. If Bobby is annoyed by Sam’s constant questions and interruptions he doesn’t show it beyond asking for more beer. They top off the six pack before Dean ever makes it back.

An unfamiliar white Ford pulls into the driveway about the same time Bobby is repacking his briefcase. Sam stands from the porch, watching it approach, and somehow isn’t surprised to see Dean in the passenger seat.

“Your brother?” Bobby asks, standing as well, and when Sam makes a sound of assent the other man nods at the driver. “That’s Castiel. Lives up the road a bit with his brother.”

“Gabriel” Sam guesses, and something in his voice makes Bobby laugh.

“Yeah, guessin’ you met him already?”

“Unfortunately.”

Bobby slaps him on the back, a little harder than is probably necessary. “He has that effect on people, but he’s not a bad kid,” he says, and descends the stairs.

For a moment Sam considers arguing but then decides against it. By the time he comes down off the porch, the white Ford is parked and Dean and Castiel have met Bobby on the lawn. Bobby seems to be telling Dean that he can take the Impala and fix it up at his shop. Dean, brandishing what appears to be a tool-kit, seems adverse to the idea.

“Don’t be a fool, boy, you don’t even have a lift out here,” Bobby says. “How the hell you gonna get into that thing’s engine?” Judging by the petulant expression on Dean’s face this is an effective argument.

“It’ll just be for a day or two,” Sam tries to soothe.

The other man, Castiel, speaks up as well. “If you’re worried about not having a mode of transportation, I can come by each morning you are without it.” His words are neat and clipped despite his accent, and his voice is low. It gives him an odd air of sincerity that momentarily takes Sam aback.

“That’d be great, Cas,” Dean says while Sam is still without words. His brother claps Castiel, Cas, on the shoulder in a friendly way, and smiles at him in a way that’s…not quite as friendly. It’s one of the smiles Dean uses when he’s _flirting._ Does he even realize he’s doing it?

“Great, now that that’s settled, can I get the damn car onto the truck? I got other shit to do today,” Bobby grouses. He isn’t missing the intense eye contact between Dean and Cas either, judging by the look he gives Sam, amused and annoyed at the same time. Sam just stares back at him, a little gobsmacked himself. He’s always known about his _own_ bisexuality. Has been out to himself for years now. But Dean? Pick-up artist, hoo-haa marine, lady-loving Dean Winchester? Well, that’s news.

At Dean’s insistence Cas puts his number into Dean’s phone. Then Cas leaves while Dean and Bobby are hooking up the Impala, and Sam stands well out of the way of all the moving vehicles as he turns this new sexuality revelation over in his head.

By the time the yard is empty but for dying grass and tire marks, the sun is beginning to set. Dean and Sam head inside together, the house equally as quiet and dark. No matter how many lights they turn on the shadows still seem to loom in every single room.

“Bobby brought us some food,” Sam calls, heading into the kitchen. The promise of a meal brings Dean like a moth to flame, and he hovers behind Sam as he opens the fridge to show off its meager contents.

“Sweet, I’m always down for a good sandwich.”

Sam hums a noncommittal note, grabbing sliced meat and cheese and handing it back to his brother. “So. Cas, huh?” he asks, then winces a little at how untactful that particular segue was.

But Dean doesn’t seem to notice it, taking his hoard and moving towards the kitchen counter to assemble it. “Yeah, he’s pretty cool. Weird dude, but I like him.”

“Like him?” Sam pushes, joining Dean at the counter and grabbing a few slices of bread for himself. His tone of voice causes Dean to glance over at him, eyebrow raised.

“Yes?”

“Like _like_ him,” Sam insists, feeling all of eight years old and gossiping about girls on the playground again.

Dean’s brow furrows, but he doesn’t react as strongly as Sam thought he would. Which is to say, there’s no no-homo-ing going on. “I guess he’s kinda cute,” Dean hedges, and goes back to his food.

They build their sandwiches in silence after that, Sam simply processing and Dean humming Mission Impossible under his breath as he assembles something that probably won’t even fit in his mouth.

“I’m sorry for being a dick this morning,” Sam says suddenly, causing both of them to look up at each other. Their eyes catch for a brief moment, discomfort passing between them, before Dean shrugs.

“It’s fine.”

“I’m just concerned about you,” Sam says in a rush. “I…I want you to be okay.”

“Sammy. It’s fine. I promise.”

Sam searches his brother’s face but finds none of the anger or frustration he’d seen there this morning.

“Okay. Good.”

“Wanna illegally stream some movies on your laptop?”

“You know I have Hulu, right?” Sam sighs. “Specifically to _avoid_ getting viruses.”

“Yeah, because you’re a little bitch who follows the rules. C’mon, I know where to find that new Fast and the Furious where they launch the cars into space.”

Sam may roll his eyes and complain the whole time, but it’s a nice evening watching movies with Dean. It’s the first time Sam has felt like he’s actually in the same room as his own brother in…a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> mandatory [tumblr](https://scribespirare.tumblr.com/) plug!


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